Post by Stecher on Nov 8, 2004 16:41:18 GMT -5
Warning Long Story/Rant
This sucks. 5 weeks of not flying: identifying the problem, deciding on parts, ordering parts, waiting for parts, getting parts, putting parts in, having them not fit, making them fit, old problem fixed, and presto another one keeps me on the ground!
Couple nights ago I put my new PSU in along with more RAM. The RAM was fine, brings me up to 1 Gig. The PSU on the other hand did not quite fit, despite the same listed dimensions. It was close, but I had to take the back fan screen off of it because it was mounted outside, not flush. The PSU's cord outlet was lower than the Dell's and so the back of the case had to be cut out, and bent out to provide room for it to lock. Others had said to saw it, but that leaves tons of metal shavings inside, no thanks. I had to resort to the brute force of my dad's hand and some pliers to bend and snap it. We had an interesting time to say the least. You'd have to see it to believe what we wound up doing. Anyway once we finally cut and bent the back of the case to get the PSU to fit and snap in, guess what. The screw holes did not match up! So little by little we worked the case's screw holes bigger to get just, and I mean just enough room to put 2 screws in the back. So there we go, finally the PSU in place and secured.
Since some were saying that it might just be the PSU and not the graphics card, I wanted to try it without the new card first. So I plugged everything in and fired it up. But now it doesn't know I have an optical drive, at all. My sister had a 6 year old USB external CD-ROM drive so we plugged that in and popped the AEP CD in. It spun up and recognized it (the D drive icon changed to the FB icon), but trying to open the sim it told me that the CD was not in. So I try the Call of Duty CD, slow to recognize, but it did, and I opened up CoD and immediately got all the graphics distortion. So now at least I know for sure it was my 9700 Pro that was cooked.
I open it back up, check the connection to the optical drive, it was fine. I unplug it and use another plug, same kind, on the same bundle. I then take out my 9700 and put in the new 9800. Close it back up, fire it up, optical drive is recognized this time. I put the AEP disk in, it doesn't know it's there. I put the CoD disk in, it doesn't know it's there. I rehook up the external drive and put CoD disk in, open the game and it works and looks great. Graphics problem solved! YAY!..........but, after 5 minutes of playing it freezes and I can't get out, have to hold power button for hard shut down. I had set the anti-aliasing and anisotropic to max and figured maybe that was why. So I tried again at the settings they used to be at and it froze again after 5 minutes of playing. I'm now thinking that its because of the old external CD-ROM drive. But later that evening with it OFF, im sitting here listening to some music and browsing car websites and it freezes on me! This morning I started it up and it didn't know I had an optical drive again.
So 5 weeks grounding and almost $400 later, here's where I'm at. The graphics distortions are gone (at least with CoD, I'd assume that FB would be okay if I were able to open it). But now I have an optical drive that, at best can't be used, and at worst does not exist as far as the computer is concerned. Old external drive doesn't recognize AEP disk. Computer freezes after 5 minutes of CoD play, or music and websurfing. On the bright side of things, at least it let me type all this out without freezing!
This sucks. 5 weeks of not flying: identifying the problem, deciding on parts, ordering parts, waiting for parts, getting parts, putting parts in, having them not fit, making them fit, old problem fixed, and presto another one keeps me on the ground!
Couple nights ago I put my new PSU in along with more RAM. The RAM was fine, brings me up to 1 Gig. The PSU on the other hand did not quite fit, despite the same listed dimensions. It was close, but I had to take the back fan screen off of it because it was mounted outside, not flush. The PSU's cord outlet was lower than the Dell's and so the back of the case had to be cut out, and bent out to provide room for it to lock. Others had said to saw it, but that leaves tons of metal shavings inside, no thanks. I had to resort to the brute force of my dad's hand and some pliers to bend and snap it. We had an interesting time to say the least. You'd have to see it to believe what we wound up doing. Anyway once we finally cut and bent the back of the case to get the PSU to fit and snap in, guess what. The screw holes did not match up! So little by little we worked the case's screw holes bigger to get just, and I mean just enough room to put 2 screws in the back. So there we go, finally the PSU in place and secured.
Since some were saying that it might just be the PSU and not the graphics card, I wanted to try it without the new card first. So I plugged everything in and fired it up. But now it doesn't know I have an optical drive, at all. My sister had a 6 year old USB external CD-ROM drive so we plugged that in and popped the AEP CD in. It spun up and recognized it (the D drive icon changed to the FB icon), but trying to open the sim it told me that the CD was not in. So I try the Call of Duty CD, slow to recognize, but it did, and I opened up CoD and immediately got all the graphics distortion. So now at least I know for sure it was my 9700 Pro that was cooked.
I open it back up, check the connection to the optical drive, it was fine. I unplug it and use another plug, same kind, on the same bundle. I then take out my 9700 and put in the new 9800. Close it back up, fire it up, optical drive is recognized this time. I put the AEP disk in, it doesn't know it's there. I put the CoD disk in, it doesn't know it's there. I rehook up the external drive and put CoD disk in, open the game and it works and looks great. Graphics problem solved! YAY!..........but, after 5 minutes of playing it freezes and I can't get out, have to hold power button for hard shut down. I had set the anti-aliasing and anisotropic to max and figured maybe that was why. So I tried again at the settings they used to be at and it froze again after 5 minutes of playing. I'm now thinking that its because of the old external CD-ROM drive. But later that evening with it OFF, im sitting here listening to some music and browsing car websites and it freezes on me! This morning I started it up and it didn't know I had an optical drive again.
So 5 weeks grounding and almost $400 later, here's where I'm at. The graphics distortions are gone (at least with CoD, I'd assume that FB would be okay if I were able to open it). But now I have an optical drive that, at best can't be used, and at worst does not exist as far as the computer is concerned. Old external drive doesn't recognize AEP disk. Computer freezes after 5 minutes of CoD play, or music and websurfing. On the bright side of things, at least it let me type all this out without freezing!
